Childless by Choice.

Three years ago, when I first started the research for my recently published book Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, 2010) I was still planning to have 2.0 kids, au natural. As a woman who often cries at the sight of infants and coos at her friend’s little ones, having biological babies always seemed like an inevitable step. But once I fully wrapped my brain around the relationship of overpopulation to climate change, especially in the West, I made a big decision: I won’t bring more kids into the world.

I learned that even if I spent the rest of my life recycling, having even one child would increase my carbon legacy by 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide. I still crawl around on the floor with toddlers when given the chance, and go ga-ga for goo-goos, but my uterus is officially closed for business. I’ll be adopting kids when the time is right.

I’m a freelance writer who makes her living in New York City, and my life doesn’t exactly suck. I’ve got family, friends, and endless culture at my fingertips (and until recently, a long-term boyfriend, so dating is now in the mix again). I’m in my confident thirties, not my “OMG WTF am I doing?” twenties. I can travel, go to dinner parties and parties that end long after dinner is finished. I can take a yoga class when I want to, dance ’til the wee hours or just cuddle up in front of the TV. I have the time to be passionate about my various causes (sexual health, sustainability, social and economic justice). I make my own hours and live a life built on my own needs and inspirations. Ain’t bad at all.

But if you hold my life up to the lens of our baby-bump-obsessed culture, there’ s a planet-sized chasm in my world: the lack of a child. Some parents seem to hold me simultaneously in contempt and awe: something few are willing to verbalize. One friend with two kids once let it slip that he believes choosing not to have children is “selfish.”

Children are of course precious, however, in our society they are deeply fetishized. Even though I’m not a traditional “childless by choice” woman (because I plan to adopt someday), I still get constant questions from people of every age: “But when?” and “Why wouldn’t you want your own kids?” As if adopted children are somehow less lovable than one’s “own” kids. “You’ll change your mind,” is a classic comment, usually from older people with teenagers or grown children.

And what about women who’ve decided that child rearing, both biological and otherwise, is not on their agenda at all? Imagine how they feel every time someone says, “But don’t you want kids?” or “Don’t worry, you’ll change your mind.” People react to the idea of women not having children with total incredulity, shock and worst of all, pity. They assume it’s a case of infertility in disguise, the lack of a relationship or that women without kids “hate children.”

In many cases, it’s none of the above. I’m in a weird category because I do plan to bring kids into my life one day. Still, I feel like it’sincredibly important to defend my sisters who are “childfree” or “childless by choice,” depending on your preferred parlance.

Hello, outrageous hypocrisy. It should be acknowledged that there are plenty of people who desperately want kids but can’t have them easily—infertile couples, gay couples, singles who don’t want to do it alone, etc. This isn’t to diminish their very real emotions about having children. At the same time, we shouldn’t be afraid to look at how unhealthy our obsession with children has become. Isn’t it possible that the massive sadness and mourning that infertile women experience is built, in part, on society’s view of them as “barren” women? Why do they think their lives will be empty without kids? It’s not all nature, that’s for sure.

Take a group of girls between three and five, playing house. Inevitably, one girl will always want to be the mother. Another will dig the “older sister” role. Another will prefer to be the baby. Some even want to be the dad. None of these choices are wrong—they just are. But as young girls grow into tweens and teens and then young women, our roles are constantly defined in smaller and smaller terms by a society that insists we’re probably not of much value unless we have children. And this socialization is so deeply built into our understanding of our self-worth that it’s almost impossible for women to know where they end and being a mother begins.

Plenty of us are probably meant not to have children—maybe our art is our baby, something to be nurtured and then sent off into the world. Maybe we have a house of rescued pets. Maybe we’re off in a developing nation helping people to lead healthy, sustainable lives.

Think about all of the abused children whose parents’ baggage has become their baggage—simply because there was no consciousness around having kids. They just did what they thought they were put here to do. Babies and young children are wildly intuitive in ways that we can’t even imagine. If they’re not exactly treasured, or worse, seen as a burden—it’s a good bet that they can feel that in their tiny bodies. And even though they can’t process it intellectually, just wait until they’re grown up.

Imagine, for a moment, if the option of not having kids was talked about in home economics or health classes in high school, just like everything else. If all of our children were truly conscious decisions, perhaps we’d have a much happier, psychologically healthier world. And that’s not even counting what reducing the population will do for Planet Earth—making all of our lives, the ones we’re living right now, safer from the ravages of climate change.

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Comments

8 Responses to “My Uterus is Officially Closed for Business, and I Have No Regrets. ~ Stefanie Iris Weiss”

Love love love this. Over the past few years, I have resolved to take the same action (adopt if I ever feel that motherly need) for the same reasons. Thank you for writing this eloquent and entertaining piece on a very important issue.

Hi Stefanie,
I totally agree with you that the choice not to have a child should become more normalized. In the vein, I think the choice not to be married, or monogamously partnered should become more normalized.

The choice to become a mother and go through the process of pregnancy is deeply personal. I felt a deep urge since the age of 16 to have a baby. It was nothing societal, it was not rational, it was biological, and dare I say, karmic? While I totally get how potentially damaging to the planet each new life could be, I prefer to think about how much light and the potential change that each being can bring as well. I don't think my denying myself an essential deep desire will in the end be of benefit to the planet as a whole.

PS — I have researched the adoption process, partly for the sake of the book and partly for personal purposes, and understand how complicated (and expensive) it can be. I talk about this in Eco-Sex as well — the playing field needs to be leveled for all those who want to adopt — in terms of expense and in terms of lifestyle (single, gay, etc.). Of course potential parents need to be vetted, and it can be uncomfortable process, I'm quite sure. I know women who have gone through this process alone, and it wasn't easy — but it was immensely rewarding in the end.

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